Should a developer be a coauthor to a paper presented about the application they developed?

Question

In our organization, project teams come up with a need and funding and developers are given a basic scope and are allowed to develop the solution. There is a certain degree of implementation freedom given to the developers. They drive the solution to pilot and live deployment from its inception.

If the solution is presented in a conference as a technical paper/white paper what is the protocol for the list of authors: because for the most part I see the project manager's and the dev team manager's names as authors but no mention of the actual developer.

Is this correct? A lot of us developers feel pretty bummed to never see our names as the coauthors.

Appreciate any pointers.

Answers to the FOLLOW UP questions

(1) in what field of study is the paper, and what are the standards of authorship for that field?

The paper is for Flood Plain Management - there is nothing on the abstract guidelines, I have called the contact person listed for comment - waiting to hear.

2) was the paper literally about the software application as your question implies, or were the software issues incidental to the topic of the paper?

The paper specifically deals with a GIS Application that is used in Coastal Engineering, yes the software is not incidental, but the meat of the paper and mentioned in the Title.

Answer 1

They should at least acknowledge work in the paper. And if you did real help on the paper, e.g. explaining the material to the authors, then you should be credited.

Answer 2

You don't own anything you create for your company, so this is more of a moral issue than a legal one.

Did you make it known that you wanted to be listed as an author? Your management might know know that you are interested.

At the end of the day, it's your management's call and there's really nothing you can do about it.

Also remember, even though you wrote the code, you are not the only one that is responsible for the success of the project.

In my opinion, credit should be given where credit is due and the person doing the work should definitely be listed as an author, but life doesn't always work out that way.

Sorry for the bad news and I hate that you are in this situation. I wish developers could just focus on making awesome stuff without having to worry about the politics of whether or not you can actually get credit for the work you accomplish.

Answer 3

They should be listed as coauthors if indeed they participated in the writing of the paper. If they participated solely in the development of the underlying system, I see little reason to have them listed.

Answer 4

This is the norm in academia. I've had work that I've developed presented worldwide... only the writers of the paper receive mention.

Answer 5

I was actually on the opposite end of this one time -- I was listed as an author on a paper I did not contribute to (except building the application). I was upset because I did not even get to proof it. Personally I felt this was highly unethical of the actual authors.

Now I didn't put up much fuss but if I ever get called on the paper, I will say that I had no part in writing it.

Without writing the actual paper, I wouldn't be too upset about not being listed as a co-author. I do feel that authors of these papers should at least list the developers (if they are known) as an appendix or something.

Answer 6

Some other answers to your question basically say "you are an author only if you help with the paper itself." But that's only true for some fields, and/or some organizations.

You don't say what field you are working in, and that can make all the difference. Some fields only list authors of the papers, some try to be extremely inclusive. Some always list authors alphabetically, others list the person with the funding first, still others list the person with the funding last. And so on.

My personal favorite rule of thumb, which I try to enforce in groups I manage when we write papers, is the following: There are three main activities leading to publication -- coming up with the idea (design, insight, planning), implementing it (building the device, writing the software, performing the experiment, analyzing the results, etc.), and writing the paper. The key contributors in all three should get authorship on the paper. (There are still judgment calls about relative contributions -- a bit of code, a couple stray ideas, or proofreading isn't enough.)

But the bottom line is, IMHO, if the paper would not have been possible (or accepted) without a significant software effort, the key people doing the software design and implementation ought to be coauthors on the paper. That's not the standard in all fields, unfortunately, but it should be.

Last thought: the original question was "Should a developer be a coauthor to a paper presented about the application they developed?" If the paper is literally about the software application, then certainly its designers/implementers deserve to be coauthors. But if the software is more incidental to the topic of the paper (e.g., the paper is about the thermodynamics of star formation, and the application was just shuffling data between formats and doing some generic statistical analysis), then maybe the software team shouldn't be authors.